Main menu

Category Archives: Tuesdays with Dorie

I wavered in my decision to make this week’s Tuesdays with Dorie selection–Oasis Naan. In the end I chose to bake a half a recipe. I love naan, the flat bread served in Indian restaurants, and have baked it before. Of course, I didn’t bake it in the traditional tandoor oven. It was still tasty and overall simple to bake. This recipe differed from others in that it is sprinkled with coarse salt, cumin seeds, and chopped scallion. We ate them with scrambled eggs for lunch.

No good pictures, though. The charger for Paul’s camera was left behind at his parent’s house after our wedding. Oh, yes. We’re married. :) It was a perfect day. Gorgeous weather and great guests. We departed quickly for our beach honeymoon, hence the forgotten charger. I’ll share a few wedding pictures instead. I’m sure you won’t mind.

The ceremony. Barefoot!:

Nani #17, our dog, took the proceedings very seriously:

We had a doughnut cake instead of cake:

With my “sisters”:

We’re married :) :

Back to the reason for this post…I took horrible pictures of the naan with my phone. So horrible, I’m embarrassed to share. Please visit Maggie of Always Add More Butter and Phyl of Of Cabbages & King Cakes for the recipe and for great pictures. You can also find the recipe in Dorie Greenspan’s Baking with Julia on page 149.

While I wouldn’t mind a pecan or two, Paul is not a fan of most nuts in baked goods. And I have a wedding dress to fit into in 4 days (!). Speaking of which, with last minute RSVPs, multiple calls to catering and the party rental people, and figuring out seating arrangements–I am very ready for our mini-moon to the beach. Until then, we have massages and facials on the calendar today and I’ve started physical therapy.

This week’s Tuesday with Dorierecipe is for Pecan Sticky Buns. Instead of pecans, I used white chocolate chunks and dried cherries. I made a full recipe of brioche (in my food processor–first time! as my stand mixer is dead and no way was I going to make brioche by hand with my bum knee) but only half recipe of the buns. I baked the buns in a cupcake tin which made them more like morning buns.

My gosh, these things were good. A flaky and tender, sweet breakfast treat worthy of a full batch when I’m back to cycling and running and training and working and moving. You can find the recipe in Dorie Greenspan’s Baking with Juila or you can visit the blogs of this week’s hosts: Lynn of Eat Drink Man Woman Dogs Cat and Nicole of Cookies on Friday.

And this marks my 400th post! Cheers!

Hungarian Shortbread? What the heck is Hungarian Shortbread? I had visions of a smoky, spicy version of the buttery, sandy cookie. As it turns out, this week’s Tuesday with Dorie recipe is a shortbread sandwich cookie filled with jam.

I made a quarter of the dough recipe and only used half of what I made. Once made, the dough is formed into balls and frozen. Then it’s grated directly into the pan (in my version I used round cookie cutters to bake the cookies), spread with jam (I didn’t attempt the rhubarb jam recipe instead used mango butter from Trader Joe’s as the filling), and then topped with more grated dough.

This created a light airy buttery cookie (or my case 4 cookies total) that was a winner here and enjoyed by all (okay, only Paul and I because there wasn’t enough cookies to share.)

*sigh* I’m one week post-surgery and I’m bored silly. Actually, bored silly may be a bit more fun than what I really am: bored-bored. I should be grateful. I’m sleeping again and my pain is under control. Paul is taking very good care of me and has the patience of a zen-master. Since the surgery, I’m only allowed to get up to use the restroom (no baking!). I see my orthopedic surgeon for my first post-surgical follow-up appointment tomorrow. I hope all goes well, the x-rays show I’m healing nicely, and my orthopedist allows more moving around.

I baked this week’s Tuesdays with Dorie selection, Lemon Loaf Cake, the morning of the day I broke my patella. As it was a busy weekend and Paul was leaving for a week-long business trip, I stuck it in the freezer for a later date.

Yesterday we took it out of the freezer and enjoyed the lemon cake for dessert. Perfect timing for a time when times are strange in our house–we were surprisingly out of treats to eat.

I made 1/2 recipe in a full recipe size pan so it baked up low and dense. I also used my homemade rough and tumble vanilla sugar in place of regular sugar. We liked the lemon flavor and thought it was a nice little cake to enjoy with tea. It’s not a stop-the-presses! type of recipe which lemon desserts have high-potential to achieve, so I probably won’t make it again.

It turns out I need surgery. On the follow-up x-ray you can see my patella fragments shifted around. The type of surgery I’m having is called open reduction internal fixation, which means my orthopedic surgeon slashes open my knee, repositions the pieces of my bone in the correct places, and then uses screws to pin everything together. The outpatient surgery lasts about an hour and a half. I’ll probably spend more time at the hospital waiting for the surgery to happen than actual time in surgery.

I spent yesterday afternoon traversing the medical clinic for my orthopedic appointment and pre-surgery work-up–blood draw, EKG, chest x-ray. Based on my google research, I should be out of my splint in six weeks. Just in time for our wedding. :) We were joking yesterday that we may have Paul walk down the aisle instead of me.

Even though my surgery is not scheduled until 5pm I haven’t been able to eat since midnight. So what do I decide to do? Spend time writing a blog post about things I can’t eat. ;)

1. Napoleons with Vanilla Bean Pastry Cream and Dairy Milk Chocolate Ganache–I used my homemade puff pastry again, my vanilla beans I bought in Tahiti, and Paul’s supply of Dairy Milk Chocolate to make these for Paul for his return home from a week-long work trip.

2. Pebbly Beach Fruit Squares–these are crunchy chewy cookies out of Alice Medrich’s Chewy Gooey Crispy Crunchycookbook. They’re a bit of work , in that you have to roll the dough and cut the squaresThe recipe calls for the use of any dried fruit and any flavor combination. I used dried cranberries and lemon zest. I really enjoyed the fresh, light taste and the crunchy yet chewy texture of these. If you have this cookbook, I encourage you to bake these. I think they are a great spring cookie and different from the usual sugar cookie. If you don’t have this cookbook, I encourage you to buy it. I haven’t had a recipe fail me yet. You can find the recipe online:pebbly beach fruit squares.

3. Tarte Fine– I made this the same day as the Parisian Apple Tartlet because it uses almost the same ingredients and is another recipe to cross-off my Tuesdays with Dorie v1.0 list. I used my homemade puff pastry again (!) and vanilla bean sugar. Leslie of Lethally Delicious was the host and you can find the recipe on her site.

4. Irish Soda Bread (again)–Paul suggested slow-cooked scrambled eggs and Irish Soda Bread for his first meal home. In a highly unusual move, this marks the third time I’ve made this recipe from Baking with Julia.

This post is 100% produced on my iPhone–pictures, links, etc. I apologize in advance if some things don’t work. My lap top is broken, Paul’s camera is out on loan to his sister, and I can’t sit at a computer these days.